JK Rowling talks to Oprah on Harry Potter's future

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Best-selling author J.K. Rowling will appear in a rare interview on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to talk about her life and career and the possibility of another Harry Potter book.

The 45-year-old British writer, who was rated by Forbes magazine earlier this year with an estimated wealth of $1 billion, talked to Winfrey for the first time from Edinburgh, Scotland in an interview to be broadcast Friday, her U.S. publisher Scholastic Inc. said Monday.

Rowling spoke about coping with fame, pressure and she "shares her thoughts on the possibility of ever writing another Harry Potter book in the future," Scholastic said in a statement.

She told Winfrey she realized her books about the boy wizard were popular and her life had changed forever when she saw an enormous line of fans outside a large store during her second U.S. book tour. She said the moment "felt Beatle-esque."

The author, who has not granted many media interviews, also told Winfrey that the cool composure she had displayed at the height of the Harry Potter mania was not quite what it seemed.

"You ask about the pressure. At that point, I kept saying to people, yeah I'm coping ... but the truth was there were times when I was barely hanging on by a thread," she said according to an early excerpt of the interview.

The books, which have sold more than 400 million copies worldwide, were transformed into top-grossing films.

The last Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," was released in mid-2007 in more than 90 countries and sold 11 million copies in its first 24 hours in Britain and the United States alone.

A two-part film adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" has been filmed, with part one slated for release in November.